Excerpt from the Book

Chapter 1: Chasing the Elusive Notion of Motion

Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein all
possessed, in addition to their other considerable talents, the ability to sniff
out the most important scientific problems. Their personal interests and
curiosities, as well as the lure of scientific immortality, drove their great
intellects and channeled their egos to tackle the most challenging and
important issues in science. It is no coincidence that they are each
recognized for their significant contributions to the science of motion—the
how and why of moving bodies. That fact is ample validation of the
importance to mankind of unmasking the elusive notion of motion.

At first encounter, the idea of motion seems quite simple. A test of, and a
requirement for, comprehension of a word or concept is a precise
definition.

How Do We Define Motion?

Motion is the act of moving from one place to another.

The definition appears rather straightforward. Although an accurate
definition may be necessary for the comprehension of a word or concept, it
is often not sufficient. In the case of motion, mankind struggled to
understand the devils in its details for many centuries. Said devils will
become apparent enough to the reader, and it is the mission of this book to
illuminate and explain these to the layperson. The great questions have
always been: how do bodies move and why do they move the way they do?
It was not until the early seventeenth century that the great Italian natural
philosopher (early scientist) Galileo Galilei took the first crucial step
toward answering those questions and unraveling motion’s mysteries.

Why Is the Notion of Motion So Important to Us?

Motion is pervasive in our world. Aristotle (ca. 350 BC) observed long ago
that to know nature, one must understand motion. Indeed, change is an
integral part of nature, and nothing exemplifies change more dramatically
than motion, that act of moving which is related to underlying natural
forces at work on bodies of mass. The quintessential example of such
change so very apparent and important to our early ancestors is the daily
cycle of day and night. The sun appears to rise and to move across the sky
during daylight hours and then disappear for more or less half the daily
cycle only to magically reappear the next morning and begin the cycle
anew. While these things were far beyond their ability to comprehend, early
man nevertheless searched for answers. What is the sun? Why is it warm?
What moves it across the sky? How and why does it come and go? Early
attempts at answers often resorted to deity attribution—sun gods and other
celestial spiritual figures. The idea of celestial deities was an easy way to
explain what was then unknowable and to at least avoid the devils in the
details of man’s best guesses. After all, gods are capable of any behavior
that lowly man might imagine—no other explanations needed!

Lightning from the sky was long considered a direct manifestation of
God’s will and intercession. Such beliefs were hardly confined to ancient
times. Divine superstition regarding lightning was prevalent as late as the
mid-eighteenth century in America and elsewhere. Not uncommonly,
structures involved in a fire caused by lightning were doused when
possible—save one, the one originally struck by the bolt. It was reasoned
that the will of God dictated that particular structure to be hit and man
should not interfere with divine will. These attitudes concerning lightning
were not dispelled completely even in civilized cultures until long after
1752, the year that Benjamin Franklin proved with his famous kite
experiment that lightning was merely a form of that newly familiar natural
phenomenon, electricity—and not some supernatural occurrence. Decades
after Franklin invented the lightning rod in 1759 to protect man-made
structures from the devastating effects of lightning strikes, the protection
they offered was often not utilized, and relatively few were installed.
Instead, resorting to superstition, church rectors often ascended their high
bell towers in the face of impending thunderstorms to ring their church
bells in an effort to ward off anticipated lightning. More than a few were actually killed in their steeples by lightning while defensively and futilely
ringing their bells.

The changing night sky with its stars and the moon and planets in motion,
as well as the natural cycles of day and night and the seasons, must have
been an endless source of wonder and confusion for the early denizens of
this earth. The possibility of an ordered universe obeying consistent,
decipherable laws of nature was simply not a concept that would likely
have occurred to early man. Also beyond comprehension was any inkling
that a branch of knowledge which we call mathematics might materialize
which would allow us to quantize, model, predict, and even control natural
phenomena.

Gradually, the more curious and imaginative of our forebears began to
suspect that there was much more to the unexplainable all around them
than manifestations of multiple puppeteer deities. At that point, natural
philosophy, as early science was called, took root and attempted its first
tentative steps to observe and systematize behaviors of the natural world.
That vast book of nature, the catalogue that has become our natural and
physical sciences, thus began from barely legible scribbles on page one.